Whitehall Report
'It's NOT The Terrorism Stupid'
www.nlpwessex.org/docs/notterrorism.htm
Real Problem Is Energy Security
December 2007
The Incoherent British Government
"The national security effort focuses
too heavily on terrorism at the expense of fighting organised crime, securing energy supplies and
tackling other international threats, a report states today. .... The document by the
think-tank Demos... [is] the result of 12 months of research funded
in part by the Cabinet Office.... The report
has been circulated in Whitehall at senior levels ahead of publication. Opinion polls by Demos revealed
that while ministers seemed fixated on terrorism the public was more worried about violent
crime and immigration. It calls for 'a fundamental review' of the structure of national
security. 'The British Government lacks a clear and coherent view of the nature
and priority of risks to the United Kingdom,' the
report states.... The idea of national security had
to encompass dangers such as the vulnerability of gas
supplies and scarcity of oil.....the report states:
'There is growing concern that the Government is becoming too focused on international
terrorism to the detriment of other threats and hazards to the UK.'”
Fixation with terrorism ‘exposes Britain to other security risks’
London
Times, 10 December 2007
| http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article3026181.ece
From December 10, 2007 Fixation with terrorism ‘exposes Britain to other security risks’The national security effort focuses too heavily on terrorism at the expense of fighting organised crime, securing energy supplies and tackling other international threats, a report states today. The document by the think-tank Demos gives warning that the country’s security apparatus is bogged down in turf wars, obsessive secrecy and outdated notions of the nation state. National Security for the Twenty-first Century, the result of 12 months of research funded in part by the Cabinet Office, recommends the creation of a National Security Secretariat. The report has been circulated in Whitehall at senior levels ahead of publication.Opinion polls by Demos revealed that while ministers seemed fixated on terrorism the public was more worried about violent crime and immigration. It calls for “a fundamental review” of the structure of national security. “The British Government lacks a clear and coherent view of the nature and priority of risks to the United Kingdom,” the report states. “The national security architecture is flawed in its design. The Government remains structured around functions and services with separate budgets for defence, foreign affairs, intelligence and development. Whitehall departments, intelligence agencies and the police forces that make up the security architecture have changed very little in the past two decades, despite the end of the Cold War and the attack on the World Trade Centre in 2001. “The unifying threat of nuclear war has been replaced by a plethora of security challenges such as trafficking and organised crime, international terrorism, energy security, pandemics and illegal immigration. They are dangers that are present but not clear.” The idea of national security had to encompass dangers such as the vulnerability of gas supplies and scarcity of oil. Ministers felt pressure to be seen to do something. There had been 53 Acts of Parliament in a decade dealing with terrorism and crime. In the 100 years up to 1997 there had been 43. But the report states: “There is growing concern that the Government is becoming too focused on international terrorism to the detriment of other threats and hazards to the UK.” The way out of this reactive approach is said to be a fundamental overhaul of institutions, creating a National Security Secretariat with control and influence across government. The report says: “This would be seen as a threat to the power of individual departments. But the reasons for change are clear. The Government can no longer muddle through on defence and foreign affairs, organised crime and counter-terrorism.” Demos points to Cobra, the emergency briefing room, as the one example of the Government’s branches combining successfully. If Cobra works, so too could a “robust, influential” secretariat. It would establish structures and policies to deal with key priorities defined by the Prime Minister, develop a picture of current and future threats and manage the £48 billion security budget. The culture of secrecy on security issues had to be eliminated. “Departments and agencies have got to shift from communicating to the public to engaging with them.” National security agencies should be held to account more rigorously. The report says that the Intelligence and Security Committee is inadequate and that the Serious Organised Crime Agency appears to be subject to no scrutiny at all. Talking the talk — Tectonic stresses Factors of change that can create security problems, such as population, energy, environment, climate change and economy — Wicked problems Unbounded in scope, time and resources with no agreement on a solution — List X Secret list of companies approved to hold classified government information — Intellipedia Interactive American intelligence database open to wide range of agencies — Need to share Opposite of “need to know”; the collaboration and dissemination of material Source: Demos |
"[Following Saddam's invasion of
Kuwait] President Bush - the first that is - called a dawn meeting of the National
Security Council at which the likely commander of any military action, one General
Schwarzkopf, expressed the general feeling that the United States might fight for Saudi
Arabia but hardly for Kuwait. President Bush told the press there was no thought of
American intervention. The United Nations anyway had voted to impose a total embargo on
Iraq. Two days after the invasion President Bush took a half day out to keep a promise to
the British prime minister who was addressing a conference in Aspen, Colorado, a resort
town in the Rockies. He found Mrs Thatcher in finer fighting fettle than all but one of his own advisers.
She stressed that fighting for Kuwait now might be a necessary step to saving Saudi Arabia
from invasion later on. ..... What so swiftly transformed the views and policy of the
United States and the onlooking allies-to-be was the recognition, first pressed on
President Bush by Mrs Thatcher and then rather late in the day realised by the King of Saudi
Arabia, that once he held Kuwait there was nothing to stop Saddam from seizing the Saudi oil fields."
Alistair Cooke's Letter From America
BBC
Online, 24 June 2002
"....[After the1990 Iraqi
invasion of Kuwait] President Bush was hesitant about how America should respond. His
foreign policy alter ego, Secretary of State Jim Baker, and his Defense Secretary, Dick
Cheney, were reluctant to act. National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft, however, thought
that Iraq had just changed the strategic equation in a way that could not be permitted. So did British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. The two argued that nothing stood
between the advance of units of the Iraqi army in Kuwait and the
immense Saudi oil fields. If we did nothing in
response to Iraq's seizing Kuwait, Saddam Hussein would think that he could get away with
seizing the Saudis' eastern oil fields. If that
happened, Baghdad would control most of the world's readily available oil. They could dictate to America. Reluctantly, Bush and his team
decided that they needed to defend the Saudi oil fields, and do so quickly. They needed
Saudi permission for the defensive deployment, but there were some in the Pentagon and
White House who thought U.S. forces needed to protect the Saudi
oil with or without Saudi approval. The mission to
persuade the Saudi King to accept U.S forces was given to Defense Secretary Dick Cheney. He assembled a
small team, including Under Secretary of Defense Paul
Wolfowitz, Central Command head Norman Schwarzkopf,
Sandy Charles of the NSC, and me, then the Assistant Secretary of State for
Politico-Military Affairs... Cheney concluded the presentation, promising that U.S forces
would come only to defend the Kingdom. President Bush wanted the King to know that he had
the President's word that the U.S. forces would leave as soon as the threat was over, or
whenever ordered to do so by the King. ..... Unknown to the Americans at the time, the
intelligence chief, Prince Turki, had been approached by the Saudi who had recruited Arabs
to fight in the Afghan War against the Soviets, Usama
Bin Laden..... When
Kuwait was invaded, he offered to make them available to the King to defend Saudi Arabia,
to drive Saddam out of Kuwait. After we left the palace, perhaps bin Laden was told of the
King's decision. His help would not be required. He could not believe it; letting
nonbelievers into the Kingdom of the Two Holy Mosques was against the beliefs of the
Wahhabist branch of Islam. Large numbers of American military in the Kingdom would violate
Islam, the construction magnate's son thought. They
would never leave."
Richard Clarke - White House Head Of Counterterrorism 1992 - 2003
Chapter 3, Unfinished Mission, Unintended Consequences
'Against All Enemies' - Edition first published in Great
Britain by The Free Press in 2004
"
We're there because the fact of the matter is that part of the world controls the world supply of oil, and whoever controls the supply of oil, especially if it were a man like Saddam Hussein, with a large army and sophisticated weapons, would have a stranglehold on the American economy and on — indeed on the world economy.""America began a historic reshaping of its presence in the Middle East yesterday, announcing a halt to active military operations in Saudi Arabia and the removal of almost all of its forces from the kingdom within weeks. The withdrawal ends a contentious 12-year-old presence in Saudi Arabia and marks the most dramatic in a set of sweeping changes in the deployment of American forces after the war in Iraq.
Withdrawal of 'infidel' American forces from Saudi Arabia has been one of the demands of Osama bin Laden, although a senior US military official said that this was 'irrelevant'.... Behind the dry talk of rearranging America's military 'footprint' in the Gulf, the great imponderables were bin Laden and Muslim radicals' complaints about the presence of 'infidels' in the birthplace of Islam. That presence was cited as one of the main justifications for the September 11 attacks. Despite American insistence that the withdrawal had not been 'dictated' by al-Qa'eda and that bin Laden was 'irrelevant', there can be little doubt that undercutting a central plank of al-Qa'eda's platform is one of several advantages offered by withdrawal from Saudi Arabia."Energy Security IS The
Problem
But Unfortunately The British Goverment Thinks The 'War On Terror' (Occupation Of
Muslim Countries) Is The Solution
Because They Don't Have A Coherent 'Plan B'
“I am saddened that it is politically
inconvenient to acknowledge
what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil.”
Alan Greenspan, Chairman Of The US Federal Reserve 1987 - 2006
Sunday Times, 16
September 2007
".... the
so-called 'war on terrorism' is being used largely as bogus
cover for achieving wider US strategic geopolitical
objectives..... 9/11 offered an extremely convenient pretext to put the PNAC plan
into action. The evidence again is quite clear that plans for military action against
Afghanistan and Iraq were in hand well before 9/11..... the PNAC blueprint of September
2000 states that the process of transforming the US into 'tomorrow's dominant force' is
likely to be a long one in the absence of 'some catastrophic and catalyzing event - like a
new Pearl Harbor'. The 9/11 attacks allowed the US to press the 'go' button for a strategy
in accordance with the PNAC agenda which it would otherwise have been politically impossible to
implement. The overriding motivation for this political
smokescreen is that the US and the UK are beginning to run out of secure
hydrocarbon energy supplies. By 2010 the Muslim world will control as much as 60% of
the world's oil production and, even more importantly, 95% of remaining global oil export
capacity. As demand is increasing, so supply is decreasing, continually since the
1960s..... the 'global war on terrorism' has the hallmarks of a
political myth propagated to pave the way for a
wholly different agenda - the US goal of world hegemony, built around securing by force
command over the oil supplies required to drive the whole project. Is collusion in this
myth and junior participation in this project really a proper aspiration for British foreign policy? If
there was ever need to justify a more objective British stance, driven by our own independent goals, this
whole depressing saga surely provides all the evidence needed for a radical change of
course." If The Invasion Of Afghanistan
(Where Al Qaeda Was Based) "Every official we questioned about the possibility of an invasion of Afghanistan said that it was almost unthinkable, absent a provocation such as 9/11...."THE 9/11COMMISSION REPORT, July 2004 (p 137) "Both civilian and military officials
of the Defense Department state flatly that neither Congress nor the American public would have supported
large-scale military operations in Afghanistan before the shock of 9/11." "To be truthful about it, there was no
way we could have got the public consent to have suddenly launched a campaign on
Afghanistan but for what happened on September 11..." "A former Pakistani diplomat has told
the BBC that the US was planning military action against Osama Bin Laden and the Taleban
even before last week's attacks. Niaz Naik, a former Pakistani Foreign Secretary, was told by senior American officials in mid-July that military action against Afghanistan would go ahead by the middle of
October. Mr Naik said US officials told him of the
plan at a UN-sponsored international contact group on Afghanistan which took place in Berlin.... Mr
Naik was told that Washington would launch its operation from bases in Tajikistan, where
American advisers were already in place. .... He said that he was in no doubt that after
the World Trade Center bombings this pre-existing US plan had been built upon and would be
implemented within two or three weeks." Of Afghanistan Before 9/11 On Behalf Of US Oil And Gas Companies Click Here |
"The Bush Administration began
making plans for an invasion of Iraq, including the use of American troops, within days of President Bush's inauguration in January
of 2001 -- not eight months later after the
9/11 attacks, as has been previously reported. That's what former Treasury Secretary Paul
O'Neill says in his first interview about his time as a White House insider.... In the
book, O'Neill is quoted as saying he was surprised that no one in a National Security
Council meeting questioned why Iraq should be invaded. 'It was all about finding a way to
do it. That was the tone of it. The president saying 'Go
find me a way to do this,' says O'Neill in
the book.... "
Saddam Ouster Planned Early '01?
CBS News,
10 January 2004
BBC, March 2005 - Bush Administration Made Plans For War And Iraq's Oil Before 9/11 Attacks
"In a world of looming shortage, Iraq
represented a unique opportunity. With 115bn barrels, it had the world's third biggest
reserves, and after years of war and sanctions they were the most underexploited. In the
late 1990s, production averaged about 2m barrels, but with the necessary investment its
reserves could support three times that..... Cheney knew, fretting about global oil
depletion in a speech in London the following year, where he noted that 'the Middle East with two thirds of the world's oil and lowest
cost is still where the prize ultimately lies'. Blair too had reason to be
anxious: British North Sea output had peaked in 1999, while the petrol protests of 2000
had made the importance of maintaining the fuel supply excruciatingly obvious. Britain's
and the US's fears were secretly formalised during the planning for Iraq. It is widely
accepted that Blair's commitment to support the attack dates back to his summit with Bush in Texas in April 2002. What is less well known is that at the same summit, Blair proposed
and Bush agreed to set up the US-UK Energy Dialogue, a permanent liaison dedicated to
'energy security and diversity'. Its existence
was only later exposed through a freedom of information inquiry. Both governments refuse
to release minutes of Dialogue meetings, but one paper dated February 2003 notes that to
meet projected demand, oil production in the Middle East would have to double by 2030 to
more than 50m barrels a day. So on the eve of the invasion, UK and US officials were
discussing how to raise production from the region - and we are invited to believe this is
coincidence. The bitterest irony is, of course, that the invasion has created conditions
that guarantee oil production will remain hobbled for years to come, bringing the global
oil peak that much closer. So if that was plan A, what on earth is plan B?"
The real casus belli: peak oil
Guardian, 26 June
2007
"Fuel is our economic lifeblood. The
price of oil can be the difference between recession and recovery. The western world is
import dependent. ....So: who develops oil and gas, what the new potential sources of
supply are, is a vital strategic question...The
Middle East, we focus on naturally."
Prime Minister's speech at the George Bush Senior Presidential
Library, Texas
10
Downing St, Press Release, 7 April 2002
AFTER THE INVASION OF
"The
British Prime Minister, House of Commons, 14 April 2003
BEFORE THE INVASION OF
".... our
energy system faces new challenges.... Our energy supplies will increasingly depend on
imported gas and oil..... we need access to a wide range of energy sources."
British Prime Minister, Foreword to DTI Energy White Paper,
February 2003
"The shortage of oil and natural gas,
relative to demand, had already changed the balance of world power. Historians may well conclude that the US decision to invade Iraq
was primarily motivated by the desire to gain physical control of Iraq’s oil and to
provide defence support to other Middle Eastern oil powers. "
Lord William Rees-Mogg
Are these the last days of the Oil Age?
London Times, 16 July 2007
"Former House Speaker [and Republican] Newt Gingrich said Thursday the Bush administration is waging
a 'phony war' on terrorism, warning that the country is losing ground against the kind of Islamic radicals who attacked the country on Sept. 11, 2001. A more effective approach, said Gingrich, would begin with a national energy strategy aimed at weaning the country from its reliance on imported oil....""For the world as a whole, oil companies are expected to keep finding and developing enough oil to offset our seventy one million plus barrel a day of oil depletion, but also to meet new demand. By some estimates there will be an average of two per cent annual growth in global oil demand over the years ahead along with conservatively
a three per cent natural decline in production from existing reserves. That means by 2010 we will need on the order of an additional fifty million barrels a day. So where is the oil going to come from? Governments and the national oil companies are obviously in control of about ninety per cent of the assets. Oil remains fundamentally a government business. While many regions of the world offer great oil opportunities, the Middle East with two thirds of the world's oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies, even though companies are anxious for greater access there, progress continues to be slow."Ex-CIA Chief Predicted 'Peak' Oil Crisis In 1999 CFR Paper
"Now most Americans accept seven
damning facts: (1) President Bush did little or nothing about terrorism before 9/11, (2)
there was no Iraqi threat to the United States, (3) the Bush
administration began plotting to invade Iraq early in their term, well before 9/11, (4) there is
no evidence of an Iraqi hand in 9/11, or of any significant support to al Qaeda, (5) there
were no weapons of mass destruction and the White House and Pentagon justified their
claims about WMD by citing phony evidence from Iraqi exiles to whom they paid millions of
dollars, (6) the Bush administration had no real plan to administer Iraq after the
invasion, and (7) Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld ignored professional military
advice and sent too few troops to Iraq to protect our forces.... There is at least one momentous error that is inescapable: President Bush has sowed the seeds of current and future
terrorism against
the United States by his needless, counterproductive, deceitful invasion of Iraq.... It pains me that so much of what I wrote in this book is
coming to pass.... It is a war we are losing,
as more and more of the Islamic world develops antipathy toward the United States and some
even develop a respect for the jihadist movement."
Richard Clarke - White House Head Of Counterterrorism 1992 - 2003
Foreword To The Paperback Edition
'Against All Enemies' - Edition first published in Great
Britain by The Free Press in 2004
"On the morning of the 12th [September
2001], DOD's [Department of Defense] focus was already beginning to shift from al Qaeda.
CIA was explicit now that al Qaeda was guilty of the attacks, but Paul Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld's
deputy, was not persuaded. It was too sophisticated and complicated an operation, he said,
for a terrorist group to have pulled off by itself, with out a state sponsor - Iraq must
have been helping them. I had a flashback to Wolfowitz saying the very same thing in April
when the administration had finally held its first deputy secretary-level meeting on
terrorism. When I had urged action on al Qaeda then, Wolfowitz had harked back to the 1993
attack on the World Trade Center, saying al Qaeda could not have done that alone and must
have had help from Iraq. The focus on al Qaeda was wrong, he had said in April, we must go
after Iraqi-sponsored terrorism. He had rejected my assertion and CIA's that there had
been no Iraqi-sponsored terrorism since 1993. Now this line of thinking was coming back.
By the afternoon on Wednesday, Secretary Rumsfeld was talking about broadening the
objectives of our response and 'getting Iraq.'... Later in the day, Secretary Rumsfeld complained that there were
no decent targets for bombing in Afghanistan and that we should consider bombing Iraq, which, he
said, had better targets. At first I thought he was joking. But he was serious and the
President did not reject out of hand the idea of attacking Iraq. Instead, he noted that
what we needed to do with Iraq was to change the government, not just hit it with more
cruise missiles, as Rumsfeld had implied."
Richard Clarke - White House Head Of Counterterrorism 1992
- 2003
Chapter 1, Evacuate The White House
'Against All Enemies' - Edition first published in Great
Britain by The Free Press in 2004
"Later, on the evening of the 12th, I
left the Video Conferencing Center and there, wandering alone around the Situation Room,
was the President. He looked like he wanted something to do. He grabbed a few of us and
closed the door to the conference room. 'Look', he told us, 'I know you have a lot to do
and all .... but I want you, as soon as you can, to go back over everything, everything.
See if Saddam did this. See if he's linked in any way....' 'Look into Iraq, Saddam,' the
President said testily and left us. Lisa Gordon-Hagerty stared after him with her mouth
hanging open. Paul Kurtz walked in, passing the President on the way out. Seeing our
expressions, he asked, 'Geez, what happened here.' 'Wolfowitz got to him, ' Lisa said shaking her head."
Richard Clarke - White House Head Of
Counterterrorism 1992 - 2003
Chapter 1, Evacuate The White House
'Against All Enemies' - Edition first published in Great
Britain by The Free Press in 2004
"Years before George W. Bush entered the White House, and years before the Sept. 11 attacks set the direction of his presidency, a group of influential neo-conservatives hatched a plan to get Saddam Hussein out of power... The group was never secret about its aims. In its 1998 open letter to Clinton, the group openly advocated unilateral U.S. action against Iraq.... Of the 18 people who signed the letter, 10 are now in the Bush administration. As well as
Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, they include Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage ... ""We are writing you because we are convinced that current American
policy toward Iraq is not succeeding..... It hardly
needs to be added that if Saddam does acquire the capability to deliver weapons of mass
destruction, as he is almost certain to do if we continue along the present course, the
safety of American troops in the region, of our friends and allies like Israel and the
moderate Arab states, and a significant portion of
the world’s supply of oil
will all be put at hazard."
Open Letter To President Bill Clinton, 26 January 1998
Signed by: Elliott Abrams, Richard L. Armitage, William J. Bennett, Jeffrey
Bergner, John Bolton, Paula Dobriansky, Francis Fukuyama, Robert Kagan Zalmay Khalilzad,
William Kristol, Richard Perle, Peter W. Rodman, Donald
Rumsfeld, William Schneider, Jr., Vin Weber., Paul
Wolfowitz, R. James Woolsey, Robert B. Zoellick
NLPWESSEX,
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